Peter Carey re-imagines Alexis de Tocqueville’s American journey with a verve that is nothing short of captivating. “Parrot & Olivier in America” is a rollicking debate about America and its opportunities, its society and class distinctions. Carey’s characters and landscapes breathe, resulting in a work that one hates to see come to an end.

Olivier (Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont), like de Tocqueville (Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville) is the son of aristocrats with deep Norman roots. At the age of 26, both men set off to America, charged with studying the penal system.

Both have a traveling partner; in de Tocqueville’s case, it was close friend Gustave de Beaumont. Olivier brings John Larrit, called Parrot.

Olivier’s sense of the world is formed by privilege: “On my seventh birthday I traveled to Paris and ate mille-feuille at the house of Mme Chateaubriand. I am said to have made the company laugh but no one can recall my witticism. I was precocious. I was a genius for the piano. I had a high opinion of myself. By 1812, the year I turned seven, I was accomplished in Latin and Greek.”

Parrot’s experience and temperament do not match those of Olivier. The son of a journeyman printer, he is nearing 50. He tells the reader, “I had been named Parrot as a child, when my skin was still pale and tender as a maiden’s breast, and I was still Parrot in 1793, when Olivier de Bah-bah Garmont was not even a twinkle in his father’s eye.

“To belabor the point, sir, I was and am distinctly senior to that unborn child.”

In 1793, he is a 12-year-old working alongside his father for a printer in England. It is there that he first picks up the art of engraving, but also where he is separated from his father. He sets off with the Marquis de Tilbot, the man who is the architect joining Olivier and Parrot in 1831.

By that time, Olivier — an attorney — is on dangerous political ground. He’s no more a fan of the current monarchy than they are of him. With the possibility of anarchy ever present, his parents want him out of the country. He thinks such retreat is shameful. The Marquis works with Parrot to line up passage to America. Olivier is drugged and sent across the sea to the West, left no chance to protest.

“Parrot & Olivier” unfolds in alternating first-person narratives, first from Olivier and then Parrot. Much of the narrative focuses on the men’s lives before they met, the experiences that formed the personalities that are struggling to find a suitable ground. Parrot often refers to Olivier as Lord Migraine; Olivier cannot seem to get his brain around why Parrot thinks he can act more like an equal than like a servant.

Upon arriving in America, it would seem natural for the two to go different ways, but the financial arrangements tie them more closely than either would like. Olivier begins his study of the American penal system and, in doing so, gradually falls in love with America.

It’s not a love that tiptoes in gently. When a bank president explains that America is a land of opportunity — that if a man works hard, he can find success — Olivier simply scoffs. But as he is drawn into a relationship with Parrot, more a scribe than a servant, he has to rethink his approach. The two are clearly playing by different ground rules.

Parrot is a populist, one who immediately embraces America’s rough-and-tumble freedom. But he is no less crippled, in different ways, than Olivier. His rootless upbringing has left scars, and he’s never developed the artistic talent that began to bloom as a boy. Nearing 50, he’s not sure what he’s done with his life and he’s not sure he can change.

The observations and experiences of the two men are as rewarding as they are thought- provoking.

Olivier worries that the taste of the masses — without the guiding hand of a wise, educated upper class — will result in a form of government doomed to be run by idiots. Parrot is more optimistic, seeing that democracy’s flaws, however serious they might be, as far preferable to a society in which the restrictions of class define a man from birth.

It’s a debate that isn’t confined to the 1830s. “Parrot & Olivier in America” is one timely work of historical fiction.

More in Entertainment

“The Black Panther” film may not only be the best of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — rivaled only by “Guardians of the Galaxy” — but also one of the most groundbreaking and blood-tingling comic-book flicks of all time.